The present invention relates to surface modified nanoparticles, methods of their preparation, and uses thereof for gene and drug delivery, and more specifically, to nanoparticles comprising surface polymers derived by a ring opening reaction.
The emerging field of nanomedicine offers opportunities in health care including curing disease and repairing damaged tissues. Polymers possessing controlled functionalities, molecular weights, polydispersities, molecular architectures and topologies are expected to play essential roles in the transport and delivery of drugs, genes, and other biologically active materials. Synthetic designs are sought that provide specific recognition and targeting capabilities of the carrier-cargo complex. Ultimately, compartmentalized (e.g., layered) nanostructures are desired in which each compartment provides some feature necessary for transport, delivery and/or release of a bio-active cargo.
Numerous polymer carriers have been prepared that are capable of delivering biologically active cargo both in vitro and in vivo, including both dynamic and static assemblies. Dynamic delivery vehicles include micelles, vesicles, liposomes, etc. which self assemble in solution around the drug cargo and are subsequently delivered to the target. These nanostructures are in continuous dynamic equilibrium with the monomeric cargo components. The micelles are constantly dissociating and reassembling, which can be advantageous for cargo release, but limiting to the circulatory lifetime of the complex. A dendrimer is an example of a static, covalently bonded, core-shell system that is limited in cargo capacity and expensive to manufacture. Star-shaped macromolecules circumvent some of these limitations, but star-shaped macromolecular compositions (and synthetic approaches thereto) found in the art offer limited versatility and utility with respect to the transport, delivery and/or release of a bio-active cargo.
A continuing need exists for expanding the scope of macromolecular compositions for gene and drug delivery, and methods of their preparation that provide synthetic design flexibility for tuning carrier properties.